


make it billboard big (and swallow it for me).

by katarama



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alcohol Mentions, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Background Eric Bittle/Jack Zimmermann - Freeform, Body Worship, Casual Sex, Emotional Sex, Hand Jobs, Implied kink (but nothing explicit), Love Confessions, M/M, Open Relationships, Oral Sex, Past Kent Parson/Jack Zimmermann, Sex Toys, Skype Sex, Vomit Mention, reference to homophobic parent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 13:10:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13636932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katarama/pseuds/katarama
Summary: Sometimes Kent wishes Bitty would at least let him pretend that the two of them dating could be real.  Sometimes he wishes Bitty didn’t treat it as a foregone conclusion that dating wasn’t something either of them wanted.





	make it billboard big (and swallow it for me).

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SummerFrost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SummerFrost/gifts).



> Happy Birthday, Gabby!!!
> 
> For the prompt bittyparse + ROSES ARE RED, VIOLETS ARE BLUE, YOU CAN DO WHATEVER YOU WANT TO ME. (PLEASE DO.)

“Chow says you’re in NYC this week,” Kent blurts.  “You doing anything this Wednesday?”

Bitty blinks slowly at him for a second or two, his brain processing.  Bitty’s breath is still ragged, his chest still as splotchy red as his cheeks, his lips bitten so puffy that Kent would kiss them if he were there.  If it were any other situation, Kent would tease Bitty about how he’s clearly not getting laid enough, if a little bit of Skype sex is enough to wear him out.  Kent just doesn’t want the back and forth to wake Bitty up enough to realize what Kent is asking.  

Kent wouldn’t hate it if Bitty didn’t realize that Wednesday is February 14th.  Kent would love if Bitty just stuck to the fact that they’re both going to be in New York and not take it down deeper than that.

There’s a reason Kent waited until it was 2 AM in Bitty’s time zone, after all.  There’s a reason Kent waited until Bitty’s eyes were practically half-lidded, a combination of exhaustion and comedrunk vulnerability.  Kent’s still half-clothed and Bitty is naked, Bitty’s lube-covered dildo dirtying his old Samwell blanket on his bed.  Bitty looks just as vulnerable as Kent feels.

Kent’s had the words caught in his throat for roughly two weeks now, but letting them out before seemed too much like showing his hand.

“Some work stuff,” Bitty says slowly.  “‘S mostly during the day, though.  I’ll hang with Nursey a little in the mornin’.  Why?  You in town?”

“Yeah,” Kent says.  “Playing Nurse Thursday night, actually.  I was wondering if you wanted to go ahead and meet up.  Go for dinner, or drinks, go back to my hotel room….”

“I’ll check my calendar and make sure I don’t have plans that day with any other handsome hockey players,” Bitty says, his voice too rough to entirely pull off teasing he’s trying for.  “I might be able to make some space for you, though.”

“Just.  Let me know,” Kent says.  A month ago the joke about more handsome hockey players would’ve landed with a laugh from both of them.  Now, Kent is running his head through the Providence Falconers’ schedule to make sure it’s an actual joke and not a possibility.  “If  _ I _ need to find another handsome hockey player to fill my bed that night….”

“Then you’ll have no trouble, because you’re Kent Parson.”  Bitty yawns, and the way his eyes squint up tugs at Kent’s heartstrings.  It’s mortifyingly squishy, and if Kent were one of his teammates, he’d be chirping himself to hell and back right now.  “I’ll pencil us in for plans, though.  I don’t think I have anything going on on Valentine’s Day.”

“I’ll take you out somewhere good, then,” Kent says softly.  “Somewhere you’ll like.”  

“Take me out somewhere where we won’t get glared down by snotty queerphobic rich people who assume we’re dating,” Bitty replies.  “Casual sounds good.”

“I have some ideas.  For now, though, I think we should probably both head to bed.”  

Bitty stares down the mess he’s made of his bed and announces he’ll deal with it tomorrow.  Kent may or may not laugh at him, and the softer smile that tugs at the corners of Bitty’s mouth lingers with Kent when they finally both hang up.

It isn’t enough to carry Kent to sleep, though.  He stares at the ceiling waiting for sleep for two hours, unable to shove Bitty’s words out of his head.

Sometimes he wishes Bitty would at least let him pretend that the two of them dating could be real.  Sometimes he wishes Bitty didn’t treat it as a foregone conclusion that dating wasn’t something either of them wanted.

* * *

 

The first time Kent said anything about it, he was mostly joking.  Bitty had been fussing on his phone all through lunch instead of paying Kent attention, and Kent couldn’t  _ not _ say something.

“Is that dude you’re texting hotter than me, to be getting all your love right now?”

Bitty had hummed thoughtfully, teasingly.  Kent expected some sort of equally teasing reply, some sort of light comment about Kent getting a big head, thinking he’s getting Bitty’s love in the first place.

“He definitely looks less like I’m having sex my beefier body double,” Bitty had said, his words sticky with humor.  “He’s got nice eyes, though.  They’re very blue.”

At the time, Kent had pushed past the fact that there was another boy in the first place.  It wasn’t like there wasn’t allowed to be.  Kent had sex with other people all the time, too; they weren’t exclusive by design. 

“Blue-eyed boys are not to be trusted, from personal experience,” Kent informed him, mock-seriousness in his tone.  “Scientifically more likely to break your heart, I think.”

“I’ll remember that next time your eyes look a little too blue for comfort.”  Bitty’s own brown eyes sparkled, because Kent’s shifting eye color was his most recent favorite source of chirps.  “You gonna break my heart, Mr. Parson?”

The impulse to say  _ no, never _ was only barely outweighed by Kent’s instinctual need to be a defensive smartass.

“I think for that to happen, you’d have to give me your heart in the first place.  I haven’t seen evidence that you even have one yet.”

Bitty’s phone went into his pocket, forgotten as Bitty raked over Kent with his eyes.  Bitty was so often scattered that Kent sometimes forgot what it felt like when Kent had all of Bitty’s focus at once, to have all that  _ intent _ directed straight at him.

“Well, if you play your cards right tonight, I’ll remind you that  _ you _ have one.”

Kent can’t remember what he said to that, anymore.  He doesn’t remember what Bitty said in return, either.  He doesn’t remember how much longer they were there after that conversation, doesn’t remember how long it actually took for the cab to come, besides that it felt interminably long.

He does remember, though, that Bitty’s phone didn’t come out for the rest of dinner.  He remembers that  Bitty’s eyes were on him in a way that made him aware of his body, that made Kent’s palms sweaty in anticipation.  

He can never forget the way his heart beat out of his chest when Bitty finally pressed him down into the bed and kissed him like he meant it.

He can never forget the way his pulse pounded in his throat when Bitty dragged his teeth along the thin skin there, sending shivers down Kent’s spine at the faintest promise of ownership.

* * *

Kent has never compared Eric Bittle to the sun, and he doesn’t ever plan to.

He used to do that with Jack.  Not that it ever really fit then, either.  When Kent met Jack, he was all hunched shoulders and ducked heads and droopy, earnest, hangdog eyes, the kind that filled Kent with the wild impulse to fix whatever invisible wrong had made Jack look so tired and sad.  But Kent always  _ felt _ like Jack was the sun.  He remembers it vividly, the warmth in his gut and the sweat on his skin and the bright lights in his eyes that blocked out all semblance of reality.  When Kent lost Jack, the world was darker.  Jack was everything to Kent, in a visceral, consuming way.

Bitty, on the other hand, is… not that.  Bitty may have warm brown eyes and pale hair and the smoothest customer service voice that Kent’s ever heard, but Bitty is shades of subtleties, a powder keg of desire and passive-aggression and bubbling anxiety.  Bitty talks like someone who’s used to crying out for help in carefully concealed code.  Like someone who had to slowly realize that the code was a necessity to stay alive, but that no one else around him could translate his words into meaning.  Bitty is a rush of wild impulses only dampened down by fear and practice, and it’s something that’s very, instinctively familiar to Kent.

Kent likes to think he learned better than to build Bitty into the sun, to let himself fall into orbit around Bitty.  Kent likes to think that not acknowledging that Bitty is the center of everything makes it true, because sometimes just saying the words is enough to make it Big and Real.

They sit at dinner on Valentine’s Day, and Kent can’t help hanging on every word that leaves Bitty’s mouth, can’t help feel a tug of satisfaction when he says something that makes Bitty smile.

He at least lets himself pretend he isn’t totally fucked.

Dinner starts off more of a hot mess than Kent was afraid it would be.  There’s a Georgia-sized knot in the pit of Kent’s stomach, tight and stubborn, unloosened by the warmth of Bitty’s presence.  There’s a hastily made red heart decoration at the center of the table that Bitty keeps staring at.  Kent can’t seem to sit still, like his body is driven to escape the awkwardness.  Like if he can’t see the way Bitty tears at the edges of his napkin as he tells an old story about his mama’s rhubarb pie recipe for twenty minutes without breathing, then it might just fade into a dream.

When the food comes, the conversation shifts, and they actually start to get somewhere.  They settle into what the two of them are in the privacy of Kent’s many hotel room beds, chirping interspersed with the kinds of conversations the two of them can’t manage to have with anyone else.  For better or worse, Kent and Bitty speak each other’s code.  From the way Bitty looks at him sometimes, Kent thinks he’s the first person Bitty’s ever met who does.

Even when things start to feel better, more engaged, the vague sense of being overwhelmed and uncomfortable doesn’t fade.  They’re both very good at pretending, but neither of them can quite manage to pull off the act.  Neither of them can convince the other that this is Totally Normal, that they aren’t both terrified at how real this feels, for wildly different reasons.

Bitty doesn’t protest when Kent covers the bill.  The relief is so pervasive it’s embarrassing to Kent.  He was afraid that Bitty wouldn’t let it be a date at all, after all that.

They’re heading outside to wait for their Uber when when Bitty’s phone goes off and things go from uncomfortable to worse.

“Oh, hi Sweetpea,” Bitty says, his voice warm and smooth.  “Happy Valentine’s Day to you, too, Jack.”

The name sticks in the forefront of Kent’s mind, lit up neon blue, seemingly innocuous in its status as the death knell to an anxious night.  Bitty coos at Jack over the phone, apologizes for not being in Providence, tells Jack that they can do something ‘maybe next year’.  Kent stares with laser focus on his phone, watching as the dot of their Uber car inches one block closer on the map, then another.  He tries his best to block out Bitty’s genuine laugh of surprise at something Jack says, because it all feels like too much, right now.

“Kent and I are having a very nice night,” Bitty tells Jack.  “About to be even nicer.  I’m going to let you go now, okay, honey?”

“I love you, too.”

The words deflate Kent, more than anything else that night has so far.  He’s known it was only a matter of time before things shifted there, because he remembers what that was like.  Meeting Jack.  Getting to know Jack.  Peeling back the layers one by one, getting to feel special for being one of the few to know what was buried underneath.  Getting to feel trusted and loved and deserving of the overwhelming attention Jack lavished after the first few rusty gates of Jack’s walls creaked open to let him inside.

Kent doesn’t think of Jack as the center of his world, anymore.  That part of Kent’s heart is still too fragmented, too shattered into pieces to put together feelings so all-consuming ever again.

But Kent can hear from the tone of Bitty’s voice, even without having to see the smile on Bitty’s face, that Bitty is in the same place that Kent was back in the Q.

Kent doesn’t think of Bitty as the sun, but Bitty sees Jack that way. 

It doesn’t seem like something Kent has the right to warn Bitty against, even though his brain is screaming out that Kent should try.  Bitty loves Jack, and that’s his own mistake to make and learn from.

* * *

“How was your blue-eyed boy in person?” Kent asked Bitty over the phone.  

Bitty always let Kent know about planned hook-ups with strangers, just in case someone needed to sound the alarm if Bitty didn’t come home in one piece.  Bitty insisted that this guy wasn’t someone to be really worried about, that Chow and Nurse both knew him through a friend of a friend, that he had left Samwell his sophomore year, just a semester before Bitty got there.  Bitty described it beforehand as more like being set up with the guy than it being a normal dating app date or a tipsy club mistake.

It didn’t stop Kent from worrying, but it did make Kent want to text Chow and get the deets on this guy.

Bitty raved about the date, commented that the guy was polite and footed the bill, that he had a  _ wonderful _ ass and that he didn’t get sloppy drunk.  At the time, Kent was all chirps about how low Bitty’s standards were if ‘does not get schwasted on our date and vomit on my shoes’ was a genuine positive quality in a boy.  

“So how was the sex?” Kent had asked lightly.

“Excuse  _ you _ , Mr. Parson,” Bitty said indignantly.  “I have enough self-respect not to give it up on a first date.”

“Mmmm, not from my experience,” Kent commented, images of a dimmed hipster bar in Cambridge flashing through his head.  

“That was a happy coincidence, not a date,” Bitty replied.  

“A  _ very _ happy coincidence,” Kent agreed.  Bitty had laughed and agreed, miles more comfortable admitting he enjoyed sex than the first time he and Kent stumbled into bed with each other.

“So tell me about him,” Kent had said, and Bitty spiraled into a long and scattered ramble about the date.  He talked about how the boy was a bit shy, but how his blue eyes were even nicer in person, and how he was funnier than Bitty expected him to be, from how formal and stilted all of his texts were.

“Oh!” Bitty had said, cutting himself off mid-sentence.  “I took a picture for the boys, I can show you.”

When the picture finally loaded, it was a punch to the stomach that Kent was wildly unprepared for.

Bitty looked handsome and very, very gay, all undercut and plaid and the barest sheen of either sweat or glitter reflecting light from his cheeks.  He had a big grin, his disarming ‘I’m not even faking this smile for the photo’ grin that Kent could pick out from the staged ones in two seconds flat, by then.

Sitting there, his long arm wrapped around Bitty’s shoulder, was Jack Zimmermann.

Kent’s tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth, and the silence between them lingered.  He didn’t know what the boundaries to him and Bitty were, whether Bitty would want to know that he knew exactly who that boy sitting next to Bitty was, that he actually knew from experience what sex was like with that boy.  That Kent’s advice about blue-eyed boys was a little too spot-on before, without even realizing.  That his advice was about that blue-eyed boy, specifically.

“I think he might be a little more vanilla in bed than I usually go for,” Bitty finally said, cutting off the silence before Kent could pump himself up into admitting he got the photo.  “He seems pretty reserved.  The poor boy asked me if it was okay to kiss me.  He didn’t kiss like someone who was kissin’ boys for the first time, though, if you know what I mean.”  Bitty’s voice drifted to dreamy, and Kent’s stomach sank.  

“Yeah,” Kent said.  “I know what you mean.  And, uh.  I know.  From, uh.  Hearing things.  That he’s not.  More vanilla in bed than you usually go for.”  Kent couldn’t bring himself to tell Bitty that he was pretty sure that Jack and Bitty would be  _ very _ compatible, that Bitty shouldn’t have any concerns about what the sex would be like.  “Word on the street, you know, queer hockey rumor channels.  If you go slower with people you date, he actually may move faster than you.  He’s not super forward, but he isn’t a prude.”

Bitty hummed, pleased.  “I was gonna text him for a second date anyway, but hearin’ that from you helps.”

Kent told Bitty that it was no problem.  Kent told Bitty that he was happy to help.  Kent told Bitty that he was glad Bitty’s first date went well, that he was glad that this could be something that would work out, that he’d heard Jack is a very attentive boyfriend.

“Just be careful,” Kent had warned Bitty, because he couldn’t in good conscience say nothing.  “He… last I heard, he wasn’t out.  Not to people not in the know.  He’s not a wear on your arm in public, bring him home to Mama Bittle kind of boy.”

“I don’t think there’s such a thing as a ‘bring him home to Mama Bittle kind of boy’ at this point anyway,” Bitty said, bitterness creeping into his voice.  

Kent let the conversation die there.  He had nothing he could say to that.

* * *

 

By the time Bitty and Kent get back to their hotel room, Kent is practically shaking out of his skin.  Bitty had kept a hand pressed firmly to Kent’s thigh the entire Uber ride there, a grounding force and a reminder, all at once.  A reminder that Bitty was going to take Kent to Kent’s own hotel room and make him  _ feel _ things.  A reminder that Bitty was going to take Kent apart under his hands and leave Kent gasping for breath in the morning when Bitty was gone and Kent was no longer drowning.

“What do you want tonight?” Kent asks Bitty when they survive the long elevator ride up to Kent’s floor, when Kent has fumbled with the lock long enough for Bitty to knowingly take the key card and swipe them in himself.

Bitty’s hands are solid, steady.  Bitty seemingly isn’t gripped with the terror of finality, with the fear that their first real date could be their last one.  With the fear that their standing hotel room meetings would soon be a thing of the past, because love is a big word, a  _ huge _ word, and one that Bitty’s never directed Kent’s way.

“I want you, honey,” Bitty says, his tone softer than Kent thinks he’s ever heard it.  “Tonight I want you.”

The words cut to Kent’s core, and he takes it as a mission.  There’s an urgency thrumming in his blood to peel his skin away, to strip himself down and hand over his heart to Bitty, to tell him  _ this is yours _ and to beg him to take it.  To plead with him to think that the shattered, misshapen thing beating in Kent’s chest is enough.

He can’t do it with his words, not like this, with ‘I love you’ ringing in his ears, haunting him.  It would feel like a shadow of what it would need to be, a desperate bid for Bitty to keep him.  He doesn’t want Bitty’s concern or Bitty’s pity, and he’s sure letting the words spill out now would get him one of those two.

He can do it with his body, though.  Can let Bitty strip him down and touch his skin, let Bitty mouth at his neck, leaving streaks of spit behind that make Kent’s whole body shiver in the cool air of the hotel room.  He can let Bitty take his time with Kent’s body totally bared, naked.  Kent has never had much to be self-conscious about, has let the whole ESPN-reading world see his naked ass, but it feels like something fuller in this moment.  It feels more, more real and more intimate and more terrifying, Bitty’s hands casually grazing Kent’s skin, his gaze so intent that Kent feels like every inch of him is under a microscope, awaiting Bitty’s approval.

Kent offers himself up and Bitty drinks him in, with his eyes and his hands and his mouth.  Bitty tells Kent ‘Lord, you’re beautiful’ with an exhale of air, something resembling the kind of awe that Kent has welling in his chest, and every conceivable emotion bubbles up underneath his skin, barely contained by the way Kent’s mouth feels glued shut with how overwhelmed he is.

“You are too,” Kent says, barely a breath.  Bitty hears, Kent knows, from the way his cheeks pink up.  From the way Bitty slides down and presses a kiss to Kent’s thigh.

“I’m gonna make you feel so good, sweetheart,” Bitty says, and Kent doesn’t doubt him.  Bitty is the most steady thing he’s had in his life other than hockey in years, has been with Kent in bed more times than just about anyone, Jack included.  Bitty knows every little thing that makes Kent gasp, knows just how to turn Kent to putty for Bitty to shape however he wants it.

He’s never taken advantage of it, so Kent trusts him enough to let to know.  He’s only ever used it to make Kent feel good, so Kent hasn’t shut him out, hasn’t denied him access.  He’s let Kent see everything of his own, too, every desire that he had been too scared to want for himself.  He has crafted a shared sense of vulnerability that was the only thing making it safe for either of them to give anything up at all.

Tonight feels like the most vulnerable Kent has ever let himself be, even with Bitty.  Tonight he’s giving Bitty everything, even as Bitty is the one down on his knees blowing Kent.  Even as Bitty is the one taking Kent down deep, coming back up to tease the head of Kent’s cock so thoroughly with his tongue that Kent can’t help but buck his hips, can’t help but react to the overwhelming, dual sensitivity and pleasure that Bitty isn’t letting him escape from.

The orgasm sneaks up on Kent quickly, and he warns Bitty with a tug to Bitty’s hair when he realizes just how close he is.  Bitty just plows forward, only letting up when he has Kent moaning and shaking and gasping for breath.

The first time Kent realizes that Bitty is just as hungry, is just as urgent, is when Kent tastes it from Bitty’s mouth, mixed with his own come.  The kiss is bruising and desperate, and Bitty’s cock is hard and leaking against Kent’s hip.  Kent gets his hands on Bitty, tugs him off fast and hard as Bitty rocks against him, Bitty’s noises buried in Kent’s mouth.  It feels like spiraling, melding every part of himself into every part of Bitty he can reach as Bitty does the same.

Even after Bitty comes, after Bitty’s cock goes soft against Kent’s skin, it takes a while before Bitty’s willing to roll off from on top of Kent.  

“Lord,” Bitty says, his throat sounding thoroughly wrecked.  It’s satisfying in a bone-deep way to hear that Kent isn’t the only one affected by this, to hear that he isn’t silly for feeling like more was taken out of him from a blowjob and a hand job than if Bitty had actually fucked him.

“Yeah,” Kent agrees.  The lump in his throat isn’t easing, even as his whole body becomes one with the bed, the tension in his arms and legs virtually disappearing.  “God.”

Bitty looks at Kent from next to him on the bed, his expression thoughtful but measured.  Kent doesn’t know how Bitty has the presence of mind to manage thoughtful when Kent feels like his feelings and his higher brain functions were just thrown in a blender and turned on high.  Bitty always did recover faster from this kind of stuff, always managed to pick out the stuff that was too heavy to deal with and push it off to a corner.

“How did that feel for you, honey?” Bitty asks after a very long minute.  If Kent didn’t know Bitty so well, he wouldn’t hear the edge of something tentative in Bitty’s voice.  

“Like everything,” Kent replies, because he’s honestly too tired, too split open wide to even begin to know how to hide it.  He’s sure it’s written on his face already, anyway.  He’s sure it was written on his face all during sex, right there for Bitty to see it if he only cared to look.

For the first time since they first hooked up, Kent feels like Bitty is actually looking.

“Yeah,” Bitty agrees.  He props himself up on the bed enough to lean over and kiss Kent’s forehead.  “Get some rest.  We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

Kent lays there with his eyes closed until sleep overtakes him.  It’s shallow but uninterrupted, and he wakes up to the dim edges of the morning sun sneaking around the cracks in the blinds.

When he turns, the bed next to him is long cold and empty, aside for a note hastily scribbled on hotel desk paper.

“I love you, too,” the note says.  There’s a giant letter B scrawled underneath, as if there were anyone else who could have left the note for him.

There are no texts on Kent’s phone from Bitty, and Bitty’s coat is gone from the desk chair.

Kent is left all alone to wonder if the ‘just not enough’ that he’s imagining at the end of the note is implied, or if it’s just in his head.

**Author's Note:**

> On tumblr [here](https://polyamorousparson.tumblr.com/).


End file.
